Mo Farah, the British Olympic champion in 10,000m and 5,000m, finished in eighth place at the 2014 London Marathon.
Photograph: John Walton/PA

The England football team’s chief doctor was censured for his “inexcusable” conduct after failing to record injections of the controversial amino acid L-carnitine given to Mo Farah before the 2014 London Marathon, it emerged on Wednesday.

Dr Rob Chakraverty, who was the chief medical officer for UK Athletics at the time, claimed he was too busy because he was dealing with 140 British athletes and had to take a flight the next day. That explanation was given short shrift by Ed Warner, the UK Athletics chairman, who admitted: “It shouldn’t have happened. I am not proud of that fact.”

Giving evidence to the department of culture, media and sport select committee, Warner revealed that Chakraverty’s lax recording of Farah’s medical data had been noted on his annual appraisal form, following a 2015 review into the Nike Oregon project where Farah trained. “That was marked out by himself and his line manager as in need of improvement. That was flushed out by the Oregon Review and it was very clearly cited on his record. He won’t be proud of that fact, but he is not going to shy away from the fact it is there.”

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However, Warner took umbrage when Damian Collins, the committee chairman, suggested the lack of medical record-taking at UK Athletics was reminiscent of British Cycling’s failure to record what medicines were given to their athletes. “Please don’t tar us with the same brush,” he said. “I think they are both inexcusable – we should have the same gold-plated standard for all athletes.”

Referencing Dr Richard Freeman, the British Cycling doctor, who kept medical records on his laptop which was stolen, Warner said: “We don’t have a dropbox culture. And if a laptop goes missing in the south of France we have a centralised database which recorded 5,000 interventions on our athletes last year.”

Earlier the committee heard evidence that Farah had been given 13.5ml of L-carnitine before the London Marathon – much less than the 50ml allowed in a six‑hour window – but that Chakraverty, who still works one day a week at UKA, had not recorded it in any official records. “When you are constantly on call with your athletes and you travel, and if I don’t record it straight away, as I didn’t in this case, then it can be forgotten,” he said. “I think given the circumstances of seeing Mo in London, I was flying out the next day, I think it is understandable.”

Collins told him that he found it strange that there were no records kept, especially given the athlete involved. “If it had been a run-of-a-mill treatment to any other athlete, then I think people would understand why it wasn’t recorded. But when it is Mo Farah being given a treatment you have never been administered before, or he has never received before, you think it would be important enough to record that information.”

Liz Nicholl, chief executive of UK Sport, defended her organisation’s response to issues around bullying and poor treatment of some athletes after being pressed by MPs about whether she had done enough to tackle such problems in cycling and canoeing. “It is important to put it into perspective,” she said. “Specific allegations have been made by specific athletes, but we can’t assume there is an issue across the system.”